king at, necessarily implies selection and arrangement--that is to
say idealism. At the same time, while art aims definitely at being in
this sense decorative, art may very possibly aim more immediately at
merely reproducing, without, selection or arrangement, the actually
existing things of the world; and this in order to obtain the mere power
of representation. In short, art which is idealistic as a master will
yet be realistic as a scholar: it decorates when it achieves, it copies
when it studies. But this is only half the question. Certain whole
schools may be described as idealistic, others as realistic, in
tendency; and this, not in their study, but in their achievement. One
school will obviously be contented with forms the most unselected and
vulgar; others will go but little out of their way in search of
form-superiority; while yet others, and these we must emphatically call
idealistic, are squeamish to the last degree in the choice and
adaptation of form, anxious, to get the very best, and make the very
best of it. Yet, on thinking over it, we shall find that realistic and
idealistic schools are all, in their achievements, equally striving
after something which is not the mere reproduction of the already
existing as such--striving, in short, after decoration. The pupil of
Perugino will, indeed, wait patiently to begin his work until he can
find a model fit for a god or goddess; while the fellow-craftsman of
Rembrandt will be satisfied with the first dirty old Jew or besotten
barmaid that comes to hand. But the realistic Dutchman is not,
therefore, any the less smitten with beauty, any the less eager to be
ornamental, than the idealistic Italian: his man and woman he takes
indeed with off-hand indifference, but he places them in that of which
the Italian shall perhaps never have dreamed, in that on which he has
expended all his science, his skill, his fancy, in that which he gives
as his addition to the beautiful things of art--in atmosphere, in light,
which are to the everyday atmosphere and light what the patiently sought
for, carefully perfected god or goddess model of Raphael is to the
everyday Jew, to the everyday barmaid, of Rembrandt.

The ideal, for the man who is quite coarsely realistic in his figures,
exists in the air, light, colour; and in saying this I have, so to
speak, turned over the page too quickly, forestalled the expression of
what I can prove only later: the disconnection of such comparative